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Saturday, 11 August 2012

Fred: on friends, family and football (not necessarily in that order)

It feels surreal writing this with only on week left till the fans return en-mass to Loftus
Road for the beginning of the 2012/2013 season. It has been a long
summer of highs and lows in British sport, finishing with an incredibly
exciting Olympic campaign. I am excited, but it will feel strange going
back to the routine of football supporting life.

Amidst
the flurry and excitement of the wall to wall coverage of sport we have
been gifted with, I had the pleasure to speak to Fred Hartman last
week. He is the latest
QPR
fan to pick up a pen and write about his passion for Queens Park
Rangers. I was lucky enough to get an early copy of his book 'It's a
Game of Two Halves' back in June and reviewed it in conjunction with
another football book 'Manchester City Ruined my Life' (see review here).
And I was moved by Fred's simple passion for the club that he supports
and how he writes with such fondness about his close friends and family.
After ensuring I've got my recorder on and phone on speaker...."Is it
Frederick or Fred?" I ask. He explains that Fred is definitely what
people call him with Frederick being used only for the book as it
sounded more serious. I knew this was going to be a jovial and fun
conversation as he continues on to explain how he started the journey to
writing his first book after I tell him how writing my blog suddenly created demand from a select but interested group of people, week in week out:

"That's how I started writing my blog Write Said Fred, it's the same kind of thing...where you do a blog with your rants...and people start saying 'I really enjoyed that, when's
the next one?' and you think well I haven't got anything to write about
so you end up writing about the fact you haven't got anything to write
about," he laughs. I completely understand where he's coming from. Once
you start the 'blogging' life, the ball does roll (albeit down a small
mound as opposed to some massive mountain). And he clearly enjoys it as
much as I do.

But I ask him about the book - and what
the catalyst was for him to write it. "I've always wanted to write a
book. When I was at school and people asked what I wanted to be when I
grew up, it would have been some kind of writer-slash-journalist, but I
suppose the catalyst was the amazing high and low that I felt when we
were promoted. I've followed QPR
for nearly 35 years, so it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen happen
to the club. But then my friend Queenie who I had obviously been going
to football with for nearly 20 years passed away within a matter of
weeks. And I think it was the incredibly high and the incredibly low- if
you put those two things together...I blogged
about it, but it didn't do it justice. And I thought, there's actually
more of a story to tell here than just 'QPR won the Championship'."

Very
quickly, I realise that what's really at the heart of the football
'memoir' that Fred has written, is a very personal journey that most
humans can relate to. Queenie was the close footballing companion of
Fred's and the book is interspersed with fond memories of their time
together. And although Fred's parents (who also passed away some time
ago) were not as fanatical about QPR
or football as he was, there's a real appreciation for them as parents
and as really decent human beings who gave all the support they could
within their modest means. Personally, I loved hearing about their
interesting lives, how his Dad "knew of" the Kray
brothers back in the day, and how he "often witnessed acts of gangland
violence in the clubs he frequented, and claimed that the only reason he
himself didn't end up propping up a flyover somewhere was down to this
close connections with the capital's Mafia hierarchy."

I
actually think this is a fascinating and unique life-and-family-story,
but Fred is so modest about this and about his achievement, as he
explains how he used the 'November book month' to write his book in just
one month. "It's a funny story actually." He tells me that after a
little bit of hesitation, once set on the topic of football, family and
the friend that he had lost, he sat down and wrote 4,000 words in one
night. "Once you get going, it's a snowball effect, but you have to
discipline yourself...you can't sit there at 1 o'clock in the morning
bleary-eyed." He jokes about how he never will write a book again, but
as he explains the lessons learned
from his experience (being organised, disciplined etc), I have a
feeling we'll be seeing a bit more from Fred in the coming years.

In
my review of the book, I talk about how Schindler from his slightly
'loftier' academic world (in Manchester City Ruined my Life), finishes,
as the title so gloriously tells us, with him losing a lot of love for
the club and deciding to no longer support it like he once did. This was
largely due to his feeling of disillusionment due to the buyout of the
club by the Abu Dhabi
clan.While it can't be said that the Rangers are quite as rich, we have
had the good fortune to be freed of debts and owned by some pretty rich
people. I wanted to know what Fred thought about this and whether he
thought that it's 'international-isation' of QPR (with the recent PR-generating tour of Asia and a plane being made in Alan McDonald's honour out in KL):

"I
can see both sides. There are people that just want to stay in the past
almost, with this feeling that we are a small club. 'Let's stay
family-orientated, let's stay in the area, let's keep that intimacy.' I
completely see that. But I also see the other side of things, that if
you're ever going to be 'successful' i.e. finishing top 6, Europe,
possibly winning trophies..challenging for the title, you have got to
move with the times and you have to have thirty, forty thousand watching
every week and you have got to have the ability to attract the very top
players in Europe....and you have got to pay those wages. To do that,
you've got to grow. I'm excited and scared at the same time. While I
want to stay with the club I grew up with in the 70s and 80s with that
family-orientated mentality, I also know that if we're ever going to
challenge we do have to move with the times. I think I'd welcome that."

He hits the nail on the head when he says:

"It mirrors society, you know that whole thing about people who don't like change. There's a lot of QPR
fans out there that won't welcome the change, while others, perhaps the
younger generation will see this as something they will embrace."

It's a Game of Two Halves also ends with Fred deciding to step away from supporting QPR. At the early part of last season, visits to Loftus
Road just seem to painful without Queenie. I ask him, given his more
positive current outlook, whether this is still the case. And he admits
quickly "No." And goes on to explain it was too difficult, especially
after Tony Fernandes came on board, not to stick the telly on, watch the games online, even if it wasn't always easy to get down to Loftus Road from his base in Norwich.

I ask him whether his kids have caught the QPR bug yet? He tells me that trips down to Loftus Road aon a Saturday are a bit of a trek and takes a whole day, so isn't something they can do all the time. Both kids get the QPR
shirt at the beginning of the season, but while Jo is older and has
been to more games he "prefers to kick a ball about with his friends."
And Katie, his younger daughter just "wants to do what her Dad and
brother do."

And there it is. We are a sport-loving nation. We go out on droves to watch
all manner of sports all year-round. And, when it comes to football
supporters sometimes get bad press about a sort of 'herd' mentality. But
there's another much more intimate side to sport. And that is about
being with friends and being with family, spending precious time
together that one day will be taken away from us. I think Fred's got it
just about right being open to the fact that maybe his kids aren't going
to be as obsessive about QPR as he is, but they sure as hell aren't going to pass up an opportunity for a fun day out with Dad.

Perhaps Queens Park Rangers won't stop being a family club after all.

£1 of every book sold goes to the Tiger Cubs. It's a Game of Two Halves is out on the 18th August at Foyles in Westfield and the QPR Superstore or on this website: Beaten Track Follow Fred @writesaidfred68

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